Indian embassy and B.P. Koirala India-Nepal Foundation organized the 2^nd edition of VOICES, a B.P. Koirala India-Nepal Foundation initiative held at Nepal-Bharat Library on Friday, July 19, 2013. On its second edition, Voices brought together two eminent media personalities and authors of Nepal – Kunda Dixit and Narayan Wagle.

Voices started with Kunda Dixit sharing his views on sarcastic journalism in Nepal and recalled the times when he started his career in journalism during the Panchayat regime.

According to Indian embassy, “during that era, journalists were confined in many ways to express their views openly. Therefore, all we could do was throw parodies in a sarcastic manner,” said Dixit in reminiscences of yesteryears.

Both Dixit and Wagle then discussed about the changing times and media practices, the revolution that the digital media has ignited, the scope of journalism in Nepal, challenges faced by national and international media along with their own intriguing real life stories as media personalities of Nepal.

Furthermore, Dixit and Wagle emphasized on the growing scope of citizen journalism in Nepal and shared about the influences of the social networking in modern era.

“Nobody reads today’s newspaper tomorrow. Today, people even do not have time to wait for an evening news on television, neither are interested in contributing their time on reading lengthy articles. It’s a competition between professional journalists vis-à-vis citizen journalists,” Dixit and Wagle enunciated together.

The event also raised curtain over how the social media such as Facebook and Twitter have been playing a vital role for societal changes and the fact that Nepal alone has approximately 2 million Facebook users, is overwhelming.

On this occasion, Ambassador of India to Nepal Jayant Prasad shared how he is amazed to see more than a dozen newspapers being published from Kathmandu every day.

The event concluded with intriguing and fruitful interaction between the two speakers and the audience.